Amy Stansbury

Amy has been passionate about local news her entire life. As a local news reporter (first in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and then in Austin, Texas) she has seen firsthand the effects of an uninformed electorate. And if there's one thing she's learned, it's that extremists benefit from empty City Halls...and the rest of us (and our democracy suffers). This is the problem she's working to solve with A Functional Democracy.

Amy is also the Editor-In-Chief of the Austin EcoNetwork, Austin's local environmental news source, as well as a cohost of Shades of Green, Austin's live environmental talk radio show. In her free time, she serves on the boards of Westcave Outdoor Discovery Center and Generation Citizen. She is also the chair of the Austin Young Chamber's Economic Development Committee and a member of the Leadership Austin class of 2018.

Hal Wuertz

Hal is a designer, researcher and facilitator, but mostly a devout optimist with a penchant for good questions.

She currently lives in Austin Texas where she's doing design research & strategy for IBM. In the past Hal has lived, worked, and learned in many different places including Boston, Cairo, Manila, and Amsterdam. She has a master's degree in architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and a philosophy degree from Brown University.

Jordan Shade

Jordan is a designer and researcher and person who generally feels pretty amazed by human existence. She lives and works in Austin, TX.